Poincare Conjecture Proof Completed 222
Flamerule writes "A New York Times article has finally provided an update on the status of Grigori Perelman's 2003 rough proof of the Poincaré Conjecture. 3 years ago, Perelman published several papers online explaining his idea for proving the conjecture, but after giving lectures at MIT and several other schools (covered on Slashdot) he returned to Russia, where he's remained silent since. Now, mathematicians in the US and elsewhere have finally finished going over his work and have produced several papers, totaling 1000 pages, that give step-by-step, complete proofs of the conjecture. In addition to winning some or all of the $1,000,000 Millennium Prize, Perelman now seems to be the favorite to receive a Fields Medal at the International Mathematics Union meeting next week, but it's not clear that he'll even show up!"
A rabbit is a donut, not a sphere. (Score:4, Insightful)
High Mips, Low I/O (Score:1, Insightful)
The tone of the summary is typical (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for capitalism and the idea of "prizes" to encourage research, but have we really become so jaded that it's a complete shock when someone does something worthwhile merely for its own sake? Perhaps he's gone on to other challenges, or he's wrapped up in some research that has his complete attention. Heck, perhaps he just enjoys math for its own sake and doesn't want to deal with all the side-effects of notoriety.
Recognition = Worry (Score:4, Insightful)
The curse of the gifted is that niggling worry in the back of the mind that if one accepts praise, one may lose his focus, drive or muse, if you will.
Re:TFA is well worth reading (Score:3, Insightful)
Side note: the Millenium Prize is a cool million. Which is $24 million less than Adam Sandler makes per movie.
Hurray for the free market! The true value for a personal accomplishment has once again been properly determined and awarded!
The prize is important (Score:2, Insightful)
name change? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I remain skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, I would invite you to write down a complete proof of some well-known mathematical fact, the Stone-Weierstrass [wikipedia.org] theorem say. You must prove this from first principles, starting with axiomatic set theory. I would be very surprised if you even managed to finish and even more surprised if the proof came in at under 1000 pages. This highlights what was mentioned by a sibling of mine: mathematics is divided into small steps and you would never dream of trying to prove something all at once.
Thirdly, this is the first ever proof of the Poincare conjecture. It is quite common in mathematics that a nicer proof of a known fact will be found.
Re:The tone of the summary is typical (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for capitalism and the idea of "prizes" to encourage research, but have we really become so jaded that it's a complete shock when someone does something worthwhile merely for its own sake?
It isn't a shock that he did it for its own sake at all. Look at the thousands of open source programmers. The shock is that he's been given a million dollars and seem uninterested. Linus Torvalds does Linux for its own sake but if someone gave him a million dollars, he'd take it. Even someone who is not materialistic might think: "hmmm. A million dollars might help many Russian orphans or deliver AIDS drugs to Africans or ..." It is strange for a single person to be neither greedy, nor ambitious nor altruistic ... merely obsessed.
Yes, that's strange. It's rare and therefore strange.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The tone of the summary is typical (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The tone of the summary is typical (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Grigori Perelman, please give us a sign! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:TFA is well worth reading (Score:3, Insightful)
Want to make a lot of money, do something the generates a lot of money. I can understand your point of view, but get real...
Re:TFA is well worth reading (Score:1, Insightful)
(And BTW mods, how the f*ck is that "insightful" in any way?)
Re:Grigori Perelman, please give us a sign! (Score:2, Insightful)
On the contrary... (Score:5, Insightful)
A Scottish physicist two centuries ago sees a strange bump-like waveform in a canal. It persists for over three miles, moving at nearly constant speed along the canal trench. He writes a paper, calling it a soliton wave and two Dutch mathematicians find a nonlinear partial differential equation that describes its motion. The equation, the Korteweg-De Vries Equation, proves fiendishly hard to solve. Finally, the crew working on the hydrogen bomb, finish the job early, so Ulam decides to use ENIAC to help him solve the Korteweg-De Vries Equation. He attains the first analytic solutions, and the study of soliton waves begins in earnest.
How does this earn a quid? Well, solitons model the way that blips of light move down a fiber-optic cable. The military decides that DARPA-net could run on fiber-optic cables, and uses them in building the early internet. Cellular telephone companies begin using fiber-optic cables to pack 100,000 phone conversations into a single pipe in such a way that they all get separated on the other end of the pipe-- one of the great engineering marvels of our time. We owe the modern internet, cell phones, anything that uses fiber-optics, to the solution of the Korteweg-De Vries equation. There was a similar burst of technology earlier in the last century when some closed-form solutions of the Schrödinger Equation were found.
Truth is, when we solve a major math problem like the Poincaré conjecture, billions of dollars of revenue are generated by new technologies that spring into being because of the new scientific understanding that the solution affords us. A thousand Adam Sandlers will not generate the amount of capital that the solution of the Poincaré conjecture will generate, especially considering that Perelman has shown the world that the Millenium Prize Problems are actually solvable.
Re:Square Pegs in Round Holes (Score:5, Insightful)
Mathematics is not about numbers and problems - it teaches brain to think. Nothing more.
Re:TFA is well worth reading (Score:3, Insightful)
Innovation in math and science generates more money than any movie.
Consider something obviously fundamental to the way we live, like calculus or Fourier transforms.
It is very foolish to think that the direct and immediate monetary rewards a person receives are any real inidcation of the value their work provides to society.
Re:High Mips, Low I/O (Score:4, Insightful)
Next time you are in a meeting think about this..
Re:The tone of the summary is typical (Score:2, Insightful)
in mathematics, the trend has mostly been to keep the insights of a big result under wraps until the proof is written down properly and checked for bugs. that is the way to get yourself into the hall of fame [st-and.ac.uk]. it is almost certain among mathematicians that fame is valued far more than money. money gets you graduate students, but mathematicians mostly think by themselves. fame gets you a theorem, or better yet, a chapter in the textbooks 400 years from now.
Re:The tone of the summary is typical (Score:3, Insightful)
Sadly, yes, doing something for it's own sake rather than for monetary gain is frowned apon
That is not correct. Look at the hoopla around both Gates and Buffett giving way their money. Look at the adoration of Mother Teresa. Look at the army of fans for Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman.
and sometimes viewed with fear and confusion,
Sure: anything out of the ordinary will engender fear and confusion. There is a difference between suspecting that someone MAY NOT BE altrustic and "frowning upon" them for BEING altrusistic. The former is quite common. The latter is pretty rare. When is the last time you saw an editorial of the form: "Why the Salvation Army MUST BE STOPPED from giving away soup."
Re:TFA is well worth reading (Score:3, Insightful)